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No Water Sales to Christians, Moslems Announce, As Arab Moslem-christian Split Widens

September 19, 1930
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Moslem well-owners today announced that in mixed Moslem-Christian quarters they would refuse to sell water to Christians. This is the latest development in the breach between the Moslem and Christian Arabs growing out of a dispute over the ownership to a cemetery in Haifa, a dispute that led to a fatal street affray.

The Moslem paper El Yarmouk, accuses the Christian Arabs, who are Catholics, of conducting propaganda favoring the transference of the Palestine Mandate to Italy. The paper asks, “Are Arabs chattel, transferable from one power to another? The Christians are not entitled to speak for the Arab nation.”

The trouble between the Christian and Moslem Arabs reached an acute stage when Jamal Bakhri, editor of a Christian-Arab paper, was killed in the street affray. The Haifa Y. M. C. A. has decided to form a separate All-Christian Union, refusing all contact with the Moslems, while the Christian Arab women have seceded from the Haifa Arab Women’s Association and formed their own group.

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